Can't Be Helped
by NerdInPajamas
Summary: They may not be in the same bunk as we fangirls would like, but they are in the same cabin, and Regina's chronic nightmares are keeping both of them from sleeping soundly. Fluff. Pre-SQ.


**A/N: Oh man, thanks to those who have reviewed so far! I definitely was kind of terrified publishing this, it being my first fanfic ever, and I'm glad it's decently received and all that. I'm starting off small with this one-shot, giving myself room to grow, and hope you all are entertained. SQ is just so cute, you know? Just wanna pinch their 30-something year old cheeks. And good lord, Regina in silk pajamas. I don't know why it does what it does to me but I don't mind. At all.**

Four nights on the Jolly Roger and just as many of Emma staring tiredly into the darkness, grinding her jaw and trying to tune out Regina's endless tossing and turning and whimpering from the nightmares that had made room in her head since the journey had began.

Or maybe they'd always been there, and Emma was just getting to know them. Maybe this was a regular thing for the adoptive mother of her kid, but she sure as hell wasn't getting used to it any time soon. Not to the erratic gasps or the thumps of Regina's feet hitting against the cabin walls or her voice whispering incoherent phrases and the same old names, Henry and Mother and Snow and Henry, over and over again. It was enough to make Emma want to jump ship and swim to Neverland by herself. She felt for the woman, really, but there was only so much sleep she could lose.

It didn't help that every morning Regina got up and carried on like the night had never happened. Her steadfast preparations everyday for when they finally settled ashore on Neverland, her fierce gaze and tone undulled by restless nights were inconceivable to Emma, considering how the nightmares extended all through the night, from a couple of hours after falling asleep til dawn. Emma chalked it up to Regina just being amazing at hiding the things that pained her, and she had to hand it to the woman, there was a lot for Regina to be pained about.

Tonight, however, she wasn't having it. Regina had been going off on a fifteen minute, outside-voice tangent about how the same number has to go out that went in, and after she had repeated for the sixth time that "The caterpillar HAS to come along." Emma whipped off her blanket and staggered through the rocking darkness to Regina's bunk. "...no, see, the smoke can disguise us the Queen of Hearts is color-blind she can't tell the difference between red and blue..."

"Regina." Emma whispered, trying not to wake her parents on the other side of the cabin. she repeated the call after no response, and then again, poking the older woman on what in the dim light looked to be her shoulder. Still no answer, so she curled her hand around Regina's upper-left arm and began gently tugging. "Regina, wake up. You're talking in your sleep and it's super annoying. Wake the fuck u-"

Emma was abruptly cut off as the sleeping woman held her own hands over Emma's and turned her back to the room, jerking the woman over her body. Emma rested her chin on the other's back for a moment, swallowing her frustrations and getting ready to resume her efforts anew, when she realized that Regina had finally fallen silent.

Honestly, she felt conflicted. Her hand was cramping against Regina's chest, but her head was actually really comfortable where it rested on the former queen's silk pajamas (leave it to her to magic an entire wardrobe onto the boat rather than suffer a single moment's discomfort), and she wasn't going to lie to herself and say she'd never imagined being in this position before, though not in these particular circumstances. And Regina was quiet, sleeping soundly, and if she left her side it would only be a matter of time before the bad dreams came back and they both slept unsoundly, so really, she owed it to the both of them to stay where she was, didn't she?

So she scooted her hip onto the side of Regina's bunk and laid her head back where it had been on the woman's back, and finally fell asleep.

And if the morning was going to be awkward beyond measure, well, then at least they would both be well-rested enough to hide it behind banter and half-assed hostility.

* * *

Used to waking up chilly and damp with sweat from her nightly terrors, Regina - still half-asleep and outside of herself - burrowed into what she could only assume to be a wall of soft warmness that had materialized into her bunk over the course of the night. When the wall sighed, however, her eyes blinked open and her head tilted back to get a focus on the face too close for comfort to her own. Before she could comprehend who she was seeing her body acted on its own, shoving the still sleeping body out of the bed and onto the hard, wooden floor.

"Oooow..." Emma groaned, scrabbling dazedly at the floorboards as she turned on her stomach and tried to find her way into some kind of sitting position. Regina, for her part, was doing much the same, pressing her back as far into the cabin wall as it would go, adjusting the shirt that had ridden up in the night, trying to comprehend, and above all trying to maintain her dignity .

"Miss Swan," she said, blushing furiously and breath hard to come by, "care to explain why you were in my bed or should I convince myself to believe your convenient and sudden bout of sleepwalking?"

"Your - um - I, uh, you keep, you kept having nightmares and I just... wanted to help...so I..." Emma bumbled. She finally found her feet and took a few steps back towards her own part of the room, putting her hands up palms out against Regina's accusations.

"So you crawled into bed with me?" She charged, her voice far more level now that she was fully awake.

"No!" Emma answered. "Kind of. You kind of pulled me in I didn't have a choice you have a strong grip I was tired it won't happen again, okay?. Let's just... forget it ever happened, yeah?"

"Honestly, Miss Swan, I don't know if I can." Regina said, accelerating gears faster than Emma could deal with at this hour in the morning. Instead she rolled her eyes and dipped her head to the side like a teenager as Regina started in on a tirade about personal space and staying out of people's business unless invited into it with a short aside to motherhood and maturity, and would have doubtless continued on into the late morning had Charming not woken up and told them to take it outside.

Regina sighed and turned to the chest that held her clothes. After picking out an outfit for the day she fixed Emma with a final glare and climbed down the ladder to the lower, storage deck to get changed. Emma turned to the sack she'd found for herself and pulled out the pants she'd worn for the past half-week and one of the ruffled shirts Hook hadn't minded giving away and got dressed where she stood.

Walking out into the open air, she resolved to involve herself in the most consuming task available to waylay Regina from continuing her lecture. She grabbed the brine-clogged wide broom resting against the walls of the captain's quarters and the bucket beside it, lowered it into the waves and spilled water out onto the deck, and rolled her eyes again as the splash connected with Regina's ankles and resulted in a sharp "Oh!"

"Watch where you're doing, Ms. Swan!" she said. In her head Emma chanted 'Mother of my child, mother of my child.' and carried on with her swabbing without a word.

Despite her initial outbursts that morning, throughout the day Regina was noticeably calmer. She was more involved - if that were even possible - and less hostile. In the early afternoon when Snow and Charming were drawing up a net of fish, they accidentally hit the older woman square in the back of the head, and instead of wrenching the net down from its holdings and cursing them all until she was blue in the face, she merely called them useless, insufferable idiots and left to change her shirt. Her usual eruptions at everyone aboard the ship were replaced by level comments that, though snide, weren't nearly as vehement as they usually were.

The day was, overall, the most peaceful they'd had yet, and the only blow out fight was between Rumpelstiltskin and Hook over a necklace the former had found hanging in the galley. While the others were happy to find this voyage finally getting to a bearable overture, Emma was hard-pressed to figure out how to keep it that way without incurring Regina's never ending vitriol.

That night she lay listening to Regina's sleep-babbling, wishing she had wax to put in her ears like Odysseus or enough control over her abilities to magic them temporarily deaf. She dropped off some time before dawn, dissatisfied and discontent, and was soon after awoken by Snow calling about breakfast. This morning both women were worse for wear, Regina raising hell over spilled bread and Emma unable to comprehend anything that wasn't said to her at least three times. When Hook asked at supper - in terms less polite than those written presently - if they had kept each other up all night, he had to be laid down himself after a pot hanging from the kitchen rafters detached itself and beat him across the head repeatedly before they could get Regina to stop.

When things were as settled as they could be, the nightmare-ridden woman stalked to the sternboard and stared out across the waves to the way they'd come. She kneaded her eyes in her palms and blew hard out of her mouth, mentally preparing herself for another night of violent dreams that wore her out more than the ship life she endured in her waking hours. She wasn't so self-deluded as to pretend that the night before last hadn't held the best sleep she'd gotten in years, and the last thing she wanted (nearly the last thing) was to go back to how her sleep had been before. To admit it to anyone, however, was more than reaching, though she could admit that Emma was the most accessible person onboard, and the second-most in her life at the moment. Though the rest kept a distance that she herself had enforced, Emma at least was wont to catch a hint and occasionally tried her in small talk. And sometimes the commenting over the changeless weather lengthened to actual conversation that later, in the pitch darkness before sleep, Regina allowed herself to remember and smile over. Sometimes.

She turned and climbed below decks to the cabin she shared with Emma, Snow and Charming. Changing into her bedclothes, she waited stiffly for Emma to return from wherever she was that wasn't here, picking at her nails and fighting with herself on whether to say what she planned on saying or leave it be for however long they're voyage would take.

Too soon, Emma stomped through the door and into their cabin, ignoring Regina and riffling through the sack that no doubt made her clothes smell even worse than they already did.

"So." Regina stood and said, directing her spiel to the ceiling. Emma turned and raised an eyebrow, listening and folding a shirt. "I suppose.. that I cannot blame you for things that you may not be able to control. Sleepwalking, from what I know of it, takes a lot to get rid of. Therapy sometimes. If you happen to accidentally..." she rolled her hands around each other, searching for the words she needed, "Find your way to other parts of the cabin, I suppose that it's beyond both of our control and that we should just let it be for the duration of the trip. Understood?"

"Crystal clear, Regina." Emma said, right eyebrow brushing her hairline, repressing a smirk at the other woman's careful language.

They stared at each other in silence before Regina continued, unsure if Emma actually got it. "Not to say that you shouldn't try to restrain yourself, but that it's forgivable that, for now, you don't know how to. So. I wouldn't be disinclined to wake up and see that you may have wandered where you did not know you were wandering."

"Cool... thanks?" Emma said. The older woman answered with a jerking nod. She sat back on her bed and lay facing the wall until Snow and Charming came in and everyone else settled down for the night.

The room reverberated with a stiff silence until first Emma and then Regina fell asleep in their separated beds, and softened and stretched for an hour more until Regina's fist collided against the wall and her first exclamation of "The hearts are so loud please Mother let me out..." stirred Emma out of her own dreams. "Too many... thousands beating can't hear my own..." The woman rambled as Emma slipped out of bed and to her side. Regina gasped sharply but quieted as Emma put a hand on her shoulder and shushed her. "So many..." she persisted before being shushed again. Hesitantly, the blonde wrapped an arm around the other and lay against her back over the covers.

"Only two." she whispered into Regina's neck. Just like the night before last, Regina turned and burrowed against Emma's chest, unconsciously driving toward the warmth she'd missed out on for she didn't know how many years. A cold fist knuckled around the material of Emma's shirt as they drifted deeper into sleep, the ship rocking around them, creaking. The night was early, and the night was dark, and it troubled neither one of them as they slept on through it, completely comfortable for the first time in ages.


End file.
